Chapter VI: Part 6

Both the words and the air had a familiar sound. They called to mind a shadowy picture of three tall, thin women in spangled skirts, all of them beating tambourines in unison and dancing in front of a painted screen. I couldn't account for the strange vision at first. It glimmered faintly, far in the depths of subconscious memory, like a colored newspaper supplement, lying in murky water at the end of a pier. Suddenly it rose into focus, drawn to the surface by the buoyant splendor of a name--the Cherry Sisters. I remembered then a vaudeville troupe which long ago made sorry capital of its lack of comeliness; and I saw them again on the island where the souls were eaten as clearly as ever I had as a youngster, knocking their tambourines on bony elbows, shaking their curls, and singing

"Shoe, fly, don't bother me,"

in shrill, cracked voices. Kaupia's version was merely a phonetic translation of the words. They meant nothing in the Paumotuan dialect; and--old woman though she was--Rangituki's dance, which accompanied the music, played in faster and faster time, was in striking contrast to the angular movements of the Cherry Sisters, tripping it in the background, across the dim footlights of the eighteen nineties.

Other canoes were arriving during this time, and at last a large canoe, which had put off from the ocean side of the village island, was seen making in toward the pass. It was loaded with pigs and chickens, the most important part of the feast, and had been eagerly awaited for more than an hour. Shouts of anticipation went up from the shore as the boat drew in with its wished-for freight; but these were a little premature. There was a stretch of ugly, broken water to be passed, where the swift ebb from the lagoon met the swell of the open sea. The canoe was badly jostled in crossing it, and some of the chickens, having worked loose from their bonds, escaped. Like the dogs of the atolls, the chickens are of a wild breed, and they took the air with sturdy wings. The chase from the shore began at once, but it was a hopeless one. Soul-Eaters' Island is five hundred yards long by three hundred broad, and there is another, on the opposite side of the pass, which is more than a mile in extent. We made frantic efforts to prevent them from reaching it. We threw sticks and stones, tried to entice them with broken coconuts, the meat temptingly accessible. It was to no purpose. They had been enticed before; their crops were full, and several hours of captivity had made them wary. Furthermore, like all Polynesian chickens, they seemed to have a racial memory of what they had been in other times, in less congenial environments--of the lean days when they had been caught and eaten at will, chased by dogs, run down by horses. They were not so far from all that as to have lost conscious pride in their regained prerogative of flight. The last we saw of them they were using it to splendid advantage over the rapid stream which separated the two islands. One old hen, alone, remained perched in the top of a coconut tree on Soul-Eaters' Island. She was in no hurry to leave. She knew that she could follow the others whenever she liked, and she knew that we knew it. She seemed drunk with a sense of freedom and power, and cackled proudly, as though more than half convinced that the nuts clustered in the nest of foliage beneath her were eggs which she had laid.

Knowing the wholesomeness of the Paumotuan appetite, I could understand why the loss of the chickens was regarded seriously. A dozen of them remained, and we had eight pigs weighing from one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds each, to say nothing of some fifty pounds of fish. All of this was good, in so far as it went, but there was a gloomy shaking of heads as we returned from our fruitless chase. Not that the Paumotuans are particularly fond of chicken; on the contrary, they don't care greatly for fowl of any sort, but it serves to fill odd corners of their capacious stomachs. It was this they were thinking of, and the possible lack, at the end of the feast, of the feeling of almost painful satiety which is to them an essential after-dinner sensation. In this emergency I contributed four one-pound tins of beef and salmon, my entire stock of substantial provisions for the adventure in solitude; but I could see that Puarei, as well as the others, regarded this as a mere relish--a wholly acceptable but light course of _hors-d'oeuvre_. Fortunately there was at hand an inexhaustible reservoir of food--the sea--and we prepared to go there for further supplies. I never lost an opportunity to witness those fish-spearing expeditions. Once I had tried my hand as a participant and found myself as dangerously out of my element as a Paumotuan would be at the joy stick of an airplane. I saw a great many fish, but I could not have speared one of them if it had been moored to the bottom, and after a few absurd attempts was myself fished into the boat, half drowned. I lay there for a few minutes, gasping for breath, my ear drums throbbing painfully from the attempt to reach unaccustomed depths.

The experiment convinced me that fish spearing in the open sea is not an easily acquired art, but one handed down in its perfection through at least twenty generations of Low Island ancestors. It is falling into disuse in some of the atolls where wealth is accumulating and tinned food plentiful; but the inhabitants of Rutiaro still follow it with old-time zest. They handle their spears affectionately, as anglers handle and sort their lies. These are true sportsman's weapons, provided with a single unbarbed dart, bound with sinnet to a tapering shaft from eight to ten feet long. Their water goggles, like their spears, they make for themselves. They are somewhat like an aviator's goggles, disks of clear glass fitted in brass rims, with an inner cushion of rubber which cups closely around the eyes, preventing the entrance of water. When adjusted they give the wearer an owlish appearance, like the horn-rimmed spectacles which used to be affected by American undergraduates. Thus equipped, with their _pareus_ girded into loin cloths, a half dozen of the younger men jumped into the rapid current which flows past Soul-Eaters' Island and swam out to sea.

Tohetika, Tehina, Pinga (the boat steerer), and I followed in a canoe. Dawn was at hand and, looking back, I saw the island, my house, and the crowd on the beach in the suffused, unreal light of sun and fading moon. In front of us the swimmers were already approaching the tumbled waters at the entrance to the pass. Upon reaching it they disappeared together, and I next saw them far on the other side, swimming in a direction parallel to the reef, and some fifty yards beyond the breaking point of the surf. When we joined them the sun was above the horizon and they were already at the sport. They lay face down on the surface of the water, turning their heads now and then for a breath of air. They swam with an easy breast stroke and a barely perceptible movement of the legs, holding their spears with their toes, near the end of the long shaft. Riding the long, smooth swell, it was hard to keep them in view, and they were diving repeatedly, coming to the surface again at unexpected places.

Through the clear water I could see every crevice and cranny in the shelving slope of coral; the mouths of gloomy caverns which undermined the reef, and swarms of fish, as strangely colored as the coral itself, passing through them, flashing across sunlit spaces, or hovering in the shadows of overhanging ledges. It was a strange world to look down upon and stranger still to see men moving about in it as though it were their natural home. Sometimes they grasped their spears as a poniard would be held for a downward blow; sometimes with the thumb forward, thrusting with an underhand movement. They were marvelously quick and accurate at striking. I had a nicer appreciation of their skill after my one attempt, which had proven to me how difficult it is to judge precisely the distance, the location of the prey, and the second, for the thrust. A novice was helpless. He suffered under the heavy pressure of the water, and the long holding of his breath cost him agonized effort. Even though he were comfortable physically he might chase, with as good result, the dancing reflections of a mirror, turned this way and that in the sunlight.

As they searched the depths to the seaward side the bodies of the fishers grew shadowy, vanished altogether, reappeared as they passed over a lighter background of blue or green which marked an invisible shoal. At last they would come clearly into view, the spear held erect, rising like embodied spirits through an element of matchless purity which seemed neither air nor water. The whistling noises which they made as they regained the surface gave the last touch of unreality to the scene. I have never understood the reason for this practice which is universal among the divers and fishers of the Low Islands, unless it is that their lungs, being famished for air, they breathe it out grudgingly through half-closed teeth. Heard against the thunder of the surf, the sounds, hoarse or shrill, according to the wont of the diver, seemed anything but human.

We returned in an hour's time with the canoe half filled with fish--square-nosed _tinga-tingas_, silvery _tamures_, brown spotted _kitos, gnareas_; we had more than made good the loss of the chickens. The preparations for the feast had been completed. The table was set or, better, the cloth of green fronds was laid on the ground near the beach. At each place there was a tin of my corned beef or salmon; the half of a coconut shell filled with raw fish, cut into small pieces in a sauce of _miti haari_--salted coconut milk--and a green coconut for drinking. Along the center of the table were great piles of fish, baked and raw; roast pork and chicken; mounds of bread stacked up like cannon balls. The bread was not of Moy Ling's baking, but made in native fashion--lumps of boiled dough of the size and weight of large grape fruit. One would think that the most optimistic stomach would ache at the prospect of receiving it, but the Paumotuan stomach is of ostrichlike hardihood and, as I have said, after long fasting it demands quantity rather than quality in food.

It was then about half past six, a seasonable hour for the feast, for the air was still cool and fresh. The food was steaming on the table, but we were not yet ready to sit down to it. Fete days, like Sundays, required costumes appropriate to the occasion, and everyone retired into the bush to change clothing. I thought then that I was to be the only disreputable banqueter of the lot, and regretted that I had been so eager to see my new house. Not expecting visitors, I had come away from the village with only my supply of food. Fortunately, Puarei had been thoughtful for me. I found not only my white clothing, but my other possessions--bolts of ribbon, perfume, the cheap jewelry, etc., which I had bought, on credit, of Moy Ling. And the house itself had been furnished and decorated during the hour when I was out with the fish spearers. There was a table and a chair, made of bits of old packing cases, in one corner; and on the sleeping mat a crazy quilt and a pillow with my name worked in red silk within a border of flowers. Hanging from the ceiling was a faded papier-mache bell, the kind one sees in grocers' windows at home at Christmas time. This was originally the gift of some trader; and the pictures, too, which decorated the walls. They had been cut from the advertising pages of some American magazine. One of them represented a man, dressed in a much-advertised brand of underwear, who was smiling with cool solicitude at two others who were perspiring heavily and wishing--if the legend printed beneath was true--that their underwear bore the same stamp as that of their fortunate comrade. There was another, in color, of a woman smiling across a table at her husband, who smiled back while they ate a particular brand of beans. The four walls of my house were hung with pictures of this sort, strung on cords of coconut fiber--Huirai's work, I was sure, done out of the kindness of his heart. He was merely an unconscious agent of the gods, administering this further reproof for my temerity in seeking consciously an adventure in solitude. As I changed my clothing I pondered the problem as to how I could get rid of the gallery without giving Huirai offense, and from this I fell to thinking of the people smiling down at me. Is our race made up, in large part, of such out-and-out materialists, whose chief joy in life lies in discovering some hitherto untried brand of soup or talcum powder? Do they live, these people? They looked real enough in the picture. I seemed to know many of them, and I remembered their innumerable prototypes I had met in the world I had left only the year before. "Well, if they are real," I thought, "what has become of the old doomsday men and women who used to stand at street corners with bundles of tracts in their hands, saying to passers-by, 'My friend, is your soul saved?'?" No answer came from the smiling materialists on all sides of me. They smiled still, as though in mockery of my attempt to elude them in whatsoever unfrequented corner of the world; as though life were merely the endless enjoyment of creature comforts, the endless, effortless use of labor-saving devices. One man, in his late fifties, who really ought to have been thinking about his soul, had in his eyes only the light of sensual gratification. He was in pajamas and half shaven, announcing to me, to the world at large: "At last! A razor!"

The sight of him offering me his useful little instrument put an end to my meditation. I rubbed ruefully a three days' growth of beard, thinking of the torture in store for me when I should next go to Pinga for a shave. He was the village barber, as well as its most skillful boat steerer. His other customers were used to his razor and his methods, and their faces were inured to pain; for had not their ancestors, through countless generations, had their beards plucked out hair by hair? I, on the other hand, was the creature of my own land of creature comforts. The anticipation of a shave was agony, and the realization--Pinga sitting on my chest, holding my head firm with one immense hand while he scraped and rasped with his dull razor--that was to die weekly and to live to die again. I got what amusement I could from the thought of the different set of values at Rutiaro. I had only to ask for a house, and Puarei had given me one, with an island of my own to set it on. He thought no more of the request than if I had asked him for a drinking coconut. But not all the wealth of the Low Island pearl fisheries, had it been mine to offer, could have procured for me a safety razor with a dozen good blades.

I heard Puarei shouting, "_Haere mai ta maa!_" and went out to join the others, my unshaved beard in woeful contrast to my immaculate white clothing. But my guests, or hosts, had the native courtesy of many primitive people, and I was not made conscious of my unreaped chin. Furthermore, everyone was hungry, and so, after Puarei had said grace for the Church of Latter Day Saints, and Huirai a second one for the Reformed Church of Latter Day Saints, and Nui-Tano a third as the Catholic representative, we fell to without further loss of time.

The enjoyment of food is assuredly one of the great blessings of life, although it is not a cause for perpetual smiling, as the writers of advertisements would have one believe. According to the Low Island way of thinking, it is not a subject to be talked about at any length. I liked their custom of eating in silence, with everyone giving undivided attention to the business in hand. It gave one the privilege of doing likewise, a relief to a man weary of the unnatural dining habits of more advanced people. It may be a trifle gross to think of your food while you are eating it, but it is natural and, if the doctors are to be believed, an excellent aid to digestion. Now and then Puarei would say, "_E mea maitai, tera_" ("A thing good, that"), tapping a haunch of roast pork with his forefinger. And I would reply, "_E, e mea maitai roa, tera_" ("Yes, a thing very good, that"). Then we would fall to eating again. On my right, Hunga went from fish to pork and from pork to tinned beef, whipping the _miti haari_ to his lips with his fingers without the loss of a drop. Only once he paused for a moment and let his eyes wander the length of the table. Shaking his head with a sigh of satisfaction, he said, "_Katinga ahuru katinga_" ("Food and yet more food"). There is no phrase sweeter to Paumotuan ears than that one.

Huirai, the constable, was the only one who made any social demands upon me. As already related, he had once made a journey from Papeete to San Francisco as a stoker on one of the mail boats and was immensely proud of the few English phrases which he had picked up during the voyage. He didn't know the meaning of them, but that made no difference. He could put on side before the others, make them believe that he was carrying on an intelligent conversation. "What's the matter?" "Oh yes!" "Never mind" were among his favorite expressions--unusually mild ones, it seemed to me, for one who had been associated with a gang of cockney stokers; and he brought them out apropos of nothing. He was an exasperating old hypocrite, but a genial one, and I couldn't help replying to some of his feints at conversation. Once, out of curiosity, wondering what his reply would be, I said, "Huirai, you're the worst old four-flusher in the seventy-two islands, aren't you?" He smiled and nodded, and came back with the most telling of all his phrases, "You go to hell, me." On that occasion it was delivered with what seemed something more than mere parrotlike aptness of reply.

Clipped to his undershirt he wore a fountain pen, which was as much a part of his costume on those dress occasions as his dungaree trousers and pandanus hat. It had a broken point, was always dry, and, although Huirai read fairly well, he could hardly write his own name. No matter. He would no more have forgotten his pen than a French soldier his _Croix de guerre_. But he was not alone in his love for these implements of the _popaa's_ (white man's) culture. There was Havaiki, for example, who owned a small folding camera which he had bought from some trader. The two men were very jealous of each other. Huirai had traveled and had a fountain pen, but Havaiki's camera was a much more complicated instrument. There had never been any films for it, but he was quite satisfied without them. The camera stood on a shelf at his house, an ever-present proof of his better title to distinction. His chief regret, I believe, was that he couldn't wear it, as Huarai did his pen. But he often carried it with him on Sundays and went through the pretense of taking pictures. Some of the more sanguine still believed that he would one day surprise the village by producing a large number of magnificent photographs.

A further account of the feast at Soul-Eaters' Island would be nothing more than a detailed statement of the amount of food consumed, and it would not be credited as truthful. It is enough to say that it was a Latter Day miracle, comparable to the feeding of the five thousand, with this reversal of the circumstances--that food for approximately that number was eaten by twenty-two men. At last Puarei sat back with a groan of content and said, "_Aue! Paia 'huru paia to tatou_." It is impossible to translate this literally, but the exact meaning is, "We are all of us full up to the neck." It was true. We were. That is, all of the men. The women and children were waiting, and as soon as we gave them place they set to on the remnants. Fortunately, there was, as Hunga had said, food and yet more food, so that no one went hungry. At the close of the feast I saw old Rangituki take a fragment of coconut frond and weave it into a neat basket. Then she gathered into it all of the fish bones and hung the basket from one of the rafters of my house. Rangituki was pure heathen, one of the unredeemed of the Rutiaroans, but I noticed that some of the Catholics and Latter Day Saints, even the Reformed Saints of the later Latter Day persuasion, all in good standing in their churches, assisted her in making the collection. I had observed the same practice at other islands. At the beginning of a meal thanks were given to the God of Christians for the bounty of the sea; but fisherman's luck was a matter of the first importance, and, while the old gods might be overthrown, there seemed to be a fairly general belief that it would not do to trifle with immemorial custom.

It was midmorning before the last of the broken meats had been removed and the beach made tidy. The breeze died away, and the shadows of the palms moved only with the imperceptible advance of the sun. It was a time for rest, for quiet meditation, and all of the older people were gathered in the shade, gazing out over a sea as tranquil as their minds, as lonely as their lives had always been and would always be. I knew that they would remain thus throughout the day, talking a little, after the refreshment of light slumbers, but for the most part sitting without speech or movement, their consciousness crossed by vague thoughts which would stir it scarcely more than the cat's-paw ruffled the surface of the water. No sudden, half-anguished realization of the swift passage of time would disturb the peace of their reverie; no sense of old loss to be retrieved would goad them into swift and feverish action.

A land crab moved across a strip of sunlight and sidled into his hole, pulling his grotesque little shadow after him; and the children, restless little spirits, splashed and shouted in the shallows of the lagoon, maneuvering fleets of empty beef and salmon tins reminders of the strange beginning of my adventure in solitude.

*CHAPTER IX*

*The Starry Threshold*

The only visible reminder which I have now of my residence on "the island where the souls were eaten" is a pocket notebook of penciled comment, with a dozen pages, blank and fair, at the back--in themselves a reminder of the fragmentary nature of that adventure in solitude, of the blank pages at the close of every chapter of experience, awaiting the final comment which is never set down. It is a small notebook of Chinese manufacture, with a pretty fantasy of flowers woven through the word "Memoranda," and butterflies with wings of gold-and-blue hovering over it, meant to suggest, perhaps, that one's memories, however happy or however seemingly enduring, are as ephemeral as they and must soon fade and die. But I am not willing to accept such a suggestion, to believe that I can ever forget even the most trivial of the events which took place at Rutiaro or at Soul-Eaters' Island. By some peculiar virtue of their own they stand out with the vividness of portions of childhood experience which remains fixed in the memory when other more important happenings have been long forgotten.

The casual reader of the notebook would never guess this from the comment written there. Did he know the length and the nature of my residence at the atoll, he would be surprised, merely, that with so much leisure for observation there should be such poverty of recorded fact. I, myself, am surprised and a little appalled when I think how the weeks slipped by, leaving me nothing to show for them. I became a spendthrift of time. I was under the delusion that my own just share of it had been immeasurably increased, that in some unaccountable way I had fallen heir to a legacy of hours and days which could never be exhausted. The delusion was of gradual growth, like the habit of reverie which fastens itself at last upon the most restless of wanderers among the atolls. In the beginning I was full of business. I remember with what earnestness of purpose I wrote on the first page of the notebook, "Rutiaro: Observations on Life and Character in the Low Archipelago." I had ambitious plans. I meant to go back and forth between my hermitage and the village island, notebook in hand saying, "_Eaha tera?_" ("What is that?"), "_Nafea ia parau Paumotu?_" ("How do you say this in Paumotuan?"). And when I had learned the language and had completed my studies of flora and fauna I was to be the Boswell of the atoll, curious, tireless, not to be rebuked by the wind rustling the fronds of the palms nor by the voice of the sea when the wind was low, saying, "Sh-h-h, sh-h-h," on thirty miles of coral reef. But I was rebuked--or so it seemed to me--and now, I fear, the learned monograph is never to be written. A faltering purpose is plainly indicated in the notebook. It becomes apparent in the first observation on "The Life and Character of the Paumotuans," which reads:

Before the starry threshold of Jove's court
My mansion is; where those immortal shapes
Of bright aerial spirits live ensphered
In regions mild, of calm and serene air.

The president of the Polynesian society would say, and rightly, no doubt, that this is not germane to the subject. But at the time I wrote it it was so accurately descriptive of the place where my house stood that it might have been embodied with scarcely the exchange of a word in an exact real-estate announcement of the location of my property. I set it down one evening in early summer, the evening of my first day's residence at Soul-Eaters' Island. The completion of my house had been celebrated with a feast, and toward midnight I was left alone, watching the departure of the last of the villagers, who were returning in their canoes along the ocean side of the atoll. The sea was as calm as I have ever seen it, and as they went homeward, dipping their paddles into the shining tracks of the stars, my guests were singing an old chant. It was one of innumerable verses, telling of an evil earth spirit in the form of a sea bird which was supposed to make its home on the _motu_, and at the end of each verse the voices of the women rose in the refrain which I could hear long after the canoes had passed from sight:

"_Aue! Aue!_
_Te nehenehe e!_"
("Alas! Alas!
How beautiful it is!")

a lament that a spirit so vindictive, so pitiless, should be so fair to outward seeming.

Standing at the starry threshold, listening to the ghostly refrain, I translated its application--its meaning, too--from the bird to the island where, perhaps, I would one day see it in my rambles. I regretted that it was so inaccessible, so remote and hidden from the world, as though that were not more than half the reason for its untarnished beauty. It is a maudlin feeling, that of sadness at the thought of loveliness hidden from appraising eyes; and I am inclined to think that it springs, not so much from an unselfish desire to share it, as from a vulgar longing to say to one's gregarious fellows: "See what I have found! Can you show me anything to equal it in beauty, you dwellers in cities?" Whatever its source in this case, I was glad that it passed quickly. No tears stained my pillow, even though I knew that Rutiaro could never be the goal of Sunday excursionists. But I was not quite easy in mind as I composed myself for sleep. I had made a poor beginning as a diarist. The first entry was fanciful and, furthermore, not my own. What original contribution to truth or beauty could I make as a result of the day's events? Finally I rose, lit my lamp, and wrote, underneath the Comus quotation:

"The Paumotuans are very fond of perfume. This is probably due to the fact that their islands, being scantly provided with flowers and sweet-smelling herbs, they take this means of satisfying their craving for fragrant odors."

Alas! Alas!
How erroneous it was!

that observation. But I thought when I made it that it was based upon a careful enough consideration of the facts. During the afternoon I had distributed some gifts among my guests, chiefly among the children. I had some bolts of ribbon and dress goods, some earrings and bracelets, thinly washed in gold, which I had bought, on credit, of Moy Ling, the Chinaman, and I had been saving them for just such an occasion as the feast at Soul-Eaters' Island. I also had a case of perfume which Moy had been very reluctant to part with--perfume and toilet waters in fancy bottles, with quaint legends printed on the labels--"June Rose," which the makers admitted had "as much body as higher-priced perfumes"; "Wild Violet: Like a faint breath from the forest floor"; "Khiva Bouquet: The Soul of the Exquisite Orient"; etc. This gift was greatly coveted. Pinga immediately took charge of the three bottles I had given his daughters and packed them carefully in a _pareu_, together with a bottle of bay rum presented to him by virtue of his office as village barber. Rangituki went among her grandchildren scolding and rating, until she had made a similar collection, and in a short time all of the perfume was in the hands of a few of the older people. This seemed to me rather high-handed procedure, but it was not my place to interfere with parental and grandparental authority. And it was as well, perhaps, that the children should be restrained. Otherwise they would have saturated their clothing and their hair, and the atoll would have smelled to heaven or very near it.

I thought no more of the episode until the following Sunday when I went to church at the village. A combined service of Latter Day Saints and the Reformed Church of Latter Day Saints was being held, an amicable arrangement which would have scandalized the white missionaries of those rival denominations. But at Rutiaro Saints and Reformed Saints live together peaceably enough and, being few in numbers, they often join forces for greater effect in the _himines_. The meeting was held in the Reformed church, a sightly structure built entirely of _niau_--the braided fronds of coconut palms--and the earthern floor was covered with mats of the same material. At one end of the room there was a raised platform and a deal table which served as a pulpit. The walls lengthwise were built to prop open outward, giving free circulation to the air and charming views of the shaded floor of the island and the blue waters of the lagoon.

The church was full, the men sitting on one side and the women on the other, according to island custom, and the children playing about on the floor between the benches. Many of the older people, too, sat on the floor with their backs to the posts which supported the roof. Interest lagged during the intervals between the singing, and although Huarai was preaching in his usual forceful, denunciatory manner, I found my own thoughts wandering on secular paths. Of a sudden it occurred to me that June Rose should be discernible among the women of the congregation if it had as much body as had been claimed for it. But I could not detect its presence nor did the faintest breath reach me from the forest floor. I was conscious only of the penetrating odor of drying copra which came through the open windows and the not unpleasant smell of coconut oil.

What had become of the perfume, I wondered. On Sunday, if at all, it should have been in evidence, for the women were in white dresses and before coming to church had made their most elaborate toilet of the week. But Huirai was warming to his theme and demanded attention, at least from me, not having heard him preach before. He had removed his coat and was perspiring and exhorting in a way which would have pleased the most devout and gloomy of missionaries. He had a peculiar oratorical manner. His face foretold clearly the birth of an idea. One could read there the first vague impulse in the brain which gave rise to it; see it gathering lucidity, glimmering, like heat lightning on a summer evening, in his cloudy mind, until it was given utterance in a voice of thunder, which rumbled away to silence as the light of creation died out of his eyes. Then he would stand motionless, gazing on vacancy, profoundly unself-conscious, as though he were merely the passionless mouthpiece of some higher power. The abruptness of his outbursts and his ferocious aspect when delivering them were disconcerting; and it was even worse when, at intervals, his eyes met mine. Even though he were in the midst of a sentence he would pause and his face would beam with a radiant smile, in striking contrast to the forbidding scowl of the moment before. Remembering his mission, he would then proceed in his former manner. Without understanding his discourse, one would have said that he was condemning all of his auditors, who had evidently been guilty of the most frightful sins. But this was not the case. His sentences were short and in the periods of silence between them I had time to make a translation.

"_Ua taparahi Kaina ia Abela_ (Cain killed Abel).... Why did he kill him? ... Because he was a bad man, a very bad man--(_taata ino roa_).... He was jealous of Abel, whom God loved because he willingly brought him gifts from his plantation.... Abel did not keep everything for himself.... He said to God, '_Teie te faraoa na Oe_' ('Here is bread for you').... He gave other things, too, many things, and he was glad to give them."

Huirai talked at great length on this theme, the members of the congregation sometimes listening and sometimes conversing among themselves. They had no scruples about interrupting the sermon. While Huirai was awaiting further inspiration hymns were started by the women and taken up at once by the others. Pinga, who sang bass parts, rocked back and forth to the cadence, one hand cupped over his right ear, the better to enjoy the effect of the music. Rangituki, who went to the different churches in turn, because of the _himines_, had one of her granddaughters in her lap, and while she sang made a careful examination of the child's head, in search of a tiny parasite which favored that nesting place. Nui-Vahine sat with her breast bare, suckling a three-months-old baby. Old men and women and young, even the children, sang. Huirai alone was silent, gazing with moody abstraction over the heads of the congregation as he pondered further the ethical points at issue in the Cain and Abel story.

I had witnessed many scenes like this during the months spent in cruising among the atolls on the _Caleb S. Winship_--scenes to interest one again and again and to furnish food for a great deal of futile speculation. How important a thing in the lives of these primitive people is this religion of ours which has replaced their old beliefs and superstitions? It would be absurd to say, "how fundamental," for religious faith is of slow growth and it was only yesterday, as time is counted, that the ship _Duff_, carrying the first missionaries who had ever visited this southern ocean, came to anchor at Tahiti. One of Huirai's remarks called to mind an account I had read of that first meeting between Christian missionaries and the heathen they had come to save. It is to be found in the narrative of the _Duff's_ three years' voyage in the south Pacific, published in 1799, by the London Missionary Society:

_Sunday, March 6, 1797_.

The morning was pleasant, and with a gentle breeze we had, by seven o'clock, got abreast of the district of Atahooroo, whence we saw several canoes putting off and paddling toward us with great speed; at the same time it fell calm, which, being in their favor, we soon counted seventy-four canoes around us, many of them double ones, containing about twenty persons each. Being so numerous, we endeavored to keep them from crowding on board; but, in spite of all our efforts to prevent it, there were soon not less than one hundred of them dancing and capering like frantic persons about our decks, crying, "_Tayo! Tayo!_" and a few broken sentences of English were often repeated. They had no weapons of any kind among them; however, to keep them in awe, some of the great guns were ordered to be hoisted out of the hold whilst they, as free from apprehension as the intention of mischief, cheerfully assisted to put them on their carriages. When the first ceremonies were over, we began to view our new friends with an eye of inquiry; their wild, disorderly behavior, strong smell of coconut oil, together with the tricks of the _arreoies_, lessened the favorable opinion we had formed of them; neither could we see aught of that elegance and beauty in their women for which they have been so greatly celebrated. This at first seemed to depreciate them in the estimation of our brethren; but the cheerfulness, good nature, and generosity of these kind people soon removed the momentary prejudices.... They continued to go about the decks till the transports of their joy gradually subsided, when many of them left us of their own accord.... Those who remained, in number about forty, being brought to order, the brethren proposed having divine service on the quarterdeck. Mr. Cover officiated; he perhaps was the first that ever mentioned with reverence the Saviour's name to these poor heathens. Such hymns were selected as had the most harmonious tunes--first, "O'er the Gloomy Hills of Darkness"; then, "Blow Ye the Trumpet, Blow"; and at the conclusion, "Praise God, from Whom All Blessings Flow." ... The whole service lasted about an hour and a quarter.

How clear a picture one has of the scene, described by men whose purity of faith, whose sincerity of belief, were beyond question. But one smiles a little sadly at the thought of their austerity, their total lack of that other divine attribute--a sense of humor. "_Tayo! Tayo!_" ("Friend! Friend!") the Tahitians cried, and the missionaries, to requite them for their kindly welcome, organized a prayer meeting an hour and a quarter in length, and sang, "O'er the Gloomy Hills of Darkness." It was a prophecy, that song. The Tahitians and others of the Polynesian family have gone far on that road since 1797.

Of course one doesn't blame the missionaries for this; but it seems to me that the chief benefit resulting from the Christianizing process is that it has offset some of the evils resulting from the rest of the civilizing process. This was not the opinion of Tino, supercargo of the _Caleb S. Winship_, however. I remember a conversation which I had with him on the subject, when Rutiaro itself lay within view, but still far distant. For the sake of argument I had made some willfully disparaging remark about traders, and Tino had taken exception to it.

"You're wrong," he said. "You know as well as I do--or maybe you don't--what these people used to be: cannibals, and not so many years ago at that. I don't suppose you would call it a genteel practice? Well, what stopped it? I'll tell you what stopped it--tinned beef."

That was a new angle of vision to me. I said nothing, but I thought I could detect a hint of a smile in his eyes as he waited for the statement to sink in.

"I have had some fun in my time," he went on, "arguing this out with the missionaries. I say tinned beef and they say the four gospels. Can't be proved either way, of course. But suppose, right now, every trading schooner in the archipelago was to lay a course for Papeete. Suppose not one of them was to go back to the atolls for the next twenty-five years. Leave the people to themselves, as you say, and let them have their missionaries, with the Golden Rule in one hand and the Ten Commandments in the other. What chance would they have of dying a natural death? The missionaries, I mean. About as much chance as I have of getting old Maroaki at Taka Raro to pay me the eight hundred francs he owes me.

"What makes me laugh inside is that the missionaries are so serious about the influence they have had on the natives. I could tell them some things--but what would be the use? They wouldn't believe me. Just before we left Papeete this time I was talking to one of the Protestants. He told me that his Church had two thousand converts in French Oceania, while the Catholics had only around six hundred, I believe it was. I said that I knew how he could get that extra six hundred into his own fold, and probably a good many more if he wanted to. All he had to do was to charter my schooner, load her with Tahiti produce--bananas, mangoes, oranges, breadfruit; he needn't take a single gallon of rum unless he wanted to. Then we would make a tour of the islands, holding church festivals, with refreshments, at every one; and at the end of the cruise I would guarantee that there wouldn't be a Catholic left in all the Paumotus. He didn't take to the plan at all, and of course it did have one weak point--if the Brothers tried the same game they would have just the same success, and nobody could tell from one week to the next which were Protestants and which were Catholics.

"That's about what happened at Taka Raro the last time I was down there. The population is supposed to be divided about half and half between the Latter Day Saints and the Catholics. There are no missionaries living on the island. The head churches in Papeete send their men around when they can to see how things are going with their flocks. That is usually about once a year for each of them. Boats don't often put in at Taka Raro. I've been there only four times in ten years, myself, and the last time I brought down a young fellow from the Protestant crowd. He had been with me the whole cruise, holding services at the islands where I had put in for copra. I hadn't gone to any of them, but at Taka Raro I felt the need of some religion. I had spent the whole day chasing that Maroaki I spoke about. The old rascal has owed me that eight hundred francs since nineteen ten. He is an elder in his church too. The minute he makes out my schooner standing in toward the pass off he goes on important business to the far end of the lagoon. I went after him that day, with my usual luck. He wasn't to be found, and I came back to the village feeling a bit ruffled up.

"It was just time for the meeting, and I decided that I might as well go as to loaf around finding that old hypocrite while my copra was being loaded. The church was packed when I went in. There wasn't a Catholic in the village that evening. All of those who had been Catholics were taking part in the _himine_ and singing the Protestant songs as well as the Latter Day Saints'. No one seemed to pay much attention to the sermon, though. The young missionary didn't understand the language very well, and the preaching was hard for him. But he seemed to feel pretty good about the meeting, and when we left, the next day, he went down to the cabin to write a report of the progress his church had made at Taka Raro. He must have had a lot to say, for he was at it all the morning. He didn't know that we passed the Ata just after we got out of the pass. That made me feel good, for Louis Germaine, her skipper, has been a rival of mine for years, and I had every kilo of dry copra there was on the island. I got the megaphone and was about to yell, 'Good luck to you, Louis!' when I saw that he had a missionary aboard, too--a priest with a knee-length beard and a black cloak; so I only waved my hand and Louis shook his fist and shouted something I couldn't make out. I was going to the westward, stood close inshore, and passed the village from the outside an hour later. The priest hadn't lost any time getting his congregation together. Since there was no copra to be bought, I suppose Louis told him he had to get a move on. There had been another religious landslide. I was sure of that from the singing, which I heard clear enough, the wind being offshore. Great singers these Paumotuans, and it doesn't make very much difference to them whether the song is 'Happy Day' or 'Jerusalem, the Golden.' Of course I didn't say anything to my missionary. As the old saying is, 'What you don't know won't hurt you.'"

This conversation with Tino was running through my mind as I strolled down the village island after the service. Tino, I decided, was prejudiced. His was the typical trader's point of view. I had heard many other incidents which bore him out in his findings, but they came usually from men interested in exploiting the islands commercially. Huirai's exposition of the old biblical story--was that merely the result of a prolonged tinned-beef crusade? Remembering the kind of sacrifice which was discussed, very likely on this very island, in the days of pure heathendom, such a conclusion seemed fantastical. No, one must be fair to the missionaries. Perhaps they were over-zealous at times, oversanguine about the results of their efforts--so were all human beings in whatever line of endeavor; but their accomplishment had been undeniably great. Here were people living orderly, quiet lives. They didn't drink, although in the early days of their contact with civilization--until quite recently, in fact--there had been terrible orgies of intoxication. To overcome that was, in itself, a worthwhile accomplishment on the part of the Church. Only a few weeks before I had met Monsieur Ferlys, the administrator of the Paumotus, at Taenga. "The reign of alcohol is over," he had said to the islanders there--strange words, coming from the lips of a Frenchman. There was to be no more rum nor gin nor wine for any of the Paumotuans. Henceforth, any trader found selling it or any native drinking it was to be severely punished.

I continued my walk to the far end of the island and, selecting a shady spot, sat down to rest. The pressure of a notebook in my hip pocket interrupted my examination of the problem, "The missionary versus the trader as a civilizing influence." I was reminded that I had made no recent observations on the life and character of the Paumotuans, and the recollection was annoying. Was I never to be able to pursue, in indolence, my unprofitable musings? Why this persistent feeling that I must set them down in black and white? Why sully the fair pages of my notebook? Words, words! The world was buried beneath their visible manifestations, and still the interminable clacking of innumerable typewriters, the roar of glutted presses. In the mind's eye I saw magnificent forests being destroyed to feed this depraved appetite for words, which were piled mountain high in libraries; which encumbered all the attics in Christendom. Words, blowing about the streets and littering the parks on Sundays; filling the ash carts on Mondays. "No," I thought, "I will no longer be guilty of adding to the sum of words. I'll not write my learned monograph." But that inner voice, which itself is a creature born of many words--an artificial thing, however insistent its utterance--spoke out loud and clear: "You idler! You waster of your inheritance of energy! You throwback to barbarism--write!"

"But why?" I replied. "Tell me that! Why?"

"Sir, because it is your vocation. And have you no convictions? Your grandfather had them, and your great-grandfather, and those missionaries of the _Duff_ you have been thinking about. Ah! the decay of convictions in this age! The lack of that old sublime belief in something--anything! Now then, I have come down to you through a long line of ancestors, and I don't mean to die through lack of exercise. You may not believe in me, but you've got to obey me. Write!"

I know that I should have no peace until I did, so I drew forth my notebook and, in line with my thoughts of a moment before, wrote, underneath the last observation on perfume: "The sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages among these islands is now prohibited by law. It is strange to find such legislation in territory under French administration. Is the prohibition movement to become world-wide, then? Is the reign of alcohol doomed in all lands?"

Exhausted by the mental effort, but somewhat easier in conscience, I replaced the notebook in my pocket. It was pleasant then to let the mind lie fallow or to occupy it with the reception of mere visual impressions. At length, although I didn't sleep, I was scarcely more animate then the fluted shell lying close by on the beach or the _kopapa_ bushes which formed a green inclosure around my resting place.

Something whirled through the air over my head and fell with a light splash in the water before me. I sat gazing at it without curiosity, hardly moved, so slowly does one come out of the depths of dreamless reverie. Little waves pushed the object gently shoreward until it lay, rolling back and forth in a few inches of clear water. "What!" I shouted. I didn't actually shout--I didn't open my lips; but the shock of astonishment seemed vocal--as loud as a blare of trumpets or a clash of cymbals. Before me lay a prettily fashioned bottle, half filled with sea water, and the label on it read, "Khiva Bouquet: The Soul of the Exquisite Orient." "Impossible!" I thought. "I am three miles from the village and no one lives at this end of the island." Then I heard voices or, better, one voice which I recognized as that of Rangituki. She was talking in a low monotone, her most effective manner when reciting one of her interminable stories of former days. Cautiously I pushed aside the bushes and looked through. Rangituki was sitting about twenty yards away, in the midst of a company of five. Pinga was one of them and Tevai another--both fathers of families and both much concerned, a few days earlier, lest their children should waste the perfume I had given them. Pinga took a pull at a bottle which I identified as belonging to Wild Violet. He made a wry face as he did it, but he took another and then another, before he set it down. The wind was toward me, and as the corks popped--or, more accurately, as stoppers were lifted--I was forced to admit that June Rose had body, impalpable, perhaps, but authentic.

I passed the furtive revelers unnoticed by going along the lagoon beach, keeping under the screen of kopapa bushes. Should I tell Puarei, the chief, of this evasion of the law? I decided that I would not, for he was a stern man and would punish the culprits severely. After all, on an island where there were so few distractions, what was a little perfume among friends?